In this Sept. 22, 2015 file photo, former CIA Director David Petraeus testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. The House Benghazi Committee that is looking into the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya is interviewing Petraeus behind closed doors as the investigation enters its third calendar year, and a presidential election year.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking member on the House Benghazi Committee, speaks to reporters before the start of the committee's closed-door hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday. The House committee is looking into the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya and is interviewing former CIA director David Petraeus as the investigation enters its third calendar year, and a presidential election year.

House Benghazi Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 6, during a break in the committee's closed-door hearing. The committee is looking into the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya and is again interviewing former CIA director David Petraeus. “What he is saying is completely consistent with what he’s said in the last and indeed with the conclusions of the bipartisan (House) Intelligence committee report,” said Schiff, as he emerged from the closed-door session.

WASHINGTON – Former CIA Director David Petraeus’s testimony to the House Benghazi committee Wednesday was consistent with what he told congressional investigators more than two years ago when he debunked several conspiracy theories about the deadly attacks, says a committee Democrat.

Petraeus spent several hours behind closed doors Wednesday answering questions from the GOP-led panel investigating the twin 2012 assaults in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Petraeus testified previously before the House Intelligence committee as part of its investigation of the attacks.

“What he is saying is completely consistent with what he’s said in the last and indeed with the conclusions of the bipartisan (House) Intelligence committee report,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of both panels, as he emerged from the closed-door session.

Schiff said there was no stand-down order or gun-running.

The two-year investigation by the GOP-led Intelligence panel found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the twin attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA annex, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.

The report, issued in November 2014, debunked persistent allegations, and found there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

Schiff said he hoped “this is the last time we have to bring the director back to repeat his testimony.”

Petraeus was the first of four former Obama administration officials scheduled to appear before the committee in the next week. The committee will question former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Friday.

All four interviews were to be conducted behind closed doors.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., told reporters that about a dozen interviews remain, including sessions with national security adviser Susan Rice and Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes. The Benghazi committee hopes to release a report “within the next few months,” said spokesman Matt Wolking.

Democrats argue that the inquiry is moving slowly to undermine the candidacy of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state at the time of the attacks. Clinton testified for some 11 hours last year before the panel and no revelations emerged during her day-night session.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s senior Democrat, called the Benghazi investigation “hyperpartisan and ineffective.”

Democrats note that the probe, begun in May 2014, has gone on longer than the 9/11 Commission took to investigate the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

Instead of following the bipartisan model set by the 9/11 Commission, Cummings said, Gowdy and other Republicans “continue to drag out this political charade closer to the 2016 presidential election, and the American taxpayers continue to pay the price.”

Republican insistence that the investigation is not politically motivated was undermined last year when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested that the House committee could take credit for Clinton’s slumping poll numbers.

The committee said it interviewed 64 witnesses last year, including 53 people who had never been interviewed by any congressional committee looking into the attacks. The panel also has reviewed about 100,000 pages of documents.

The attacks have been the subject of seven previous congressional investigations and an independent panel led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.

The 12-member committee has spent more than $5 million since its creation.

Republicans say the committee has been hindered by stonewalling by the State Department and other executive branch agencies.

“While we are still waiting to receive crucial documents from the State Department and the CIA, and still waiting for important witnesses to be made available, the committee is diligently working to complete its thorough, fact-centered investigation,” committee spokesman Wolking said.

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